Blippar CEO Celebrates One Year In The U.S. With AR Advertising Demo

Today Blippar, a two-year old AR advertising company out of the UK, is celebrating its one-year anniversary in the U.S.

AR advertising sounds about as exciting API management, but 3 million users beg to differ. At its core, Blippar lets users scan Blippable content in the real world (think Ketchup bottles, packets of gum, train station posters, etc) to see extra digital content through augmented reality tech.

Obviously, this has been done before, but Blippar’s scale and smooth technology (users can access the Blippar digital content within 300 milliseconds of scanning) makes this one of the stronger steps toward mainstream augmented reality use, especially in advertising.

Mitra explained to TechCrunch that big brands are certainly interested in AR, but use it in their own native, self-developed applications and campaigns. Blippar is different because it acts as a consumer-friendly portal to AR advertising, so that users have a single destination to which they can go and experience a brand’s digital content.

So far, the service has over 3 million users (1 million of which are in the U.S.), with 500 brands and over 150 publishers participating on the platform.

Obviously, brands are champing at the bit for this type of interaction with consumers. Plus, Blippar offers them all kinds of consumer touch points and data, like their location, what time of day they’re interacting, which content is most popular, etc. For publishers, especially in the print and magazine realm, Blippar offers a way for users to buy direct from a magazine.

Even more impressive, Blippar allows brands to modify the digital content based on time of day, location, and other data points, ensuring that the Blippar AR content is as relevant as possible.

Right now, Blippar functions as a communications tool between brands and consumers, but the long-term vision involves making augmented reality a mainstream medium. Eventually, users will be able to build their own Blippable content to be shared with their friends.

For now, however, Blippar is focused on spreading the world and scaling the platform.

via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/OZ4YvBmTS-w/